The Dividing Line (2016 rewrite)

He closed the door behind her, went to his kid's room and found some generic sweat-pants and a couple of t-shirts. Socks wouldn't be a problem, but shoes might be. He pulled out a couple pairs from the closet that looked like a 'maybe' and gathered them up and put them just outside the bathroom door. He called out to her, told her where to find the clothes and she answered "Okay!" He looked at his watch, phoned the D.A.s office, got shuffled around, then asked a clerk to look up some information on a Sara Wood, unknown DOB possibly 19 to 20 years old, arrested in May, he thought. When he was informed she was twenty he breathed a little easier. Not much, but a little. He asked if they had done any blood work, wanted to know if he'd been exposed to anything, then hung up the phone.

He sat in the living room, turned on the evening news which was, as always, full of news about terrorists and the Kardashians. He heard the water cut off, the shower door sliding open; a few minutes later he heard the bathroom door open and close as Sara grabbed the clothes he'd set out. "Can I use your brush?" she called out.

"Yeah, go ahead. Oh, yeah. There are some new toothbrushes in the medicine cabinet over the sink. Help yourself."

About five minutes later she came out. There must have been a pair of gym shorts stuck between the t-shirts, because she came out wearing navy colored shorts, a white t-shirt emblazoned with an L.A. Laker's logo, some white gym socks and an almost new pair of black suede Pumas.

Ed McCarley's blood pressure went through the roof. The girl that walked out of the bathroom that day looked hotter than a firecracker on the fourth of July. Her hair was reddish-blond once the dirt and grime of the city had been rinsed away; it struck him in that moment she looked like a very thin Sissy Spacek. Suddenly his voice was shaking -- and he looked away. "Well, how'd that feel?" He felt his face flushing -- and very uneasy.

Sara Wood walked into the room and sat on the couch next to Ed McCarley; she obviously knew enough about the world, and the baser instincts of men, to understand the effect she was having on him. "That felt really nice," she said with a smile, leaving him to drift in silence. She found herself looking at his forehead, and the wrinkles over his eyes, at his receding hairline, and his left eyebrow was twitching!

But Ed McCarley stood up and walked away, headed toward the bathroom. "If ya don't mind, I'm gonna take a quick shower, then I'll take you out to dinner. How's that sound?" 'And it's gonna be a cold fuckin' shower, too,' Ed McCarley thought as he peeled off his jeans.

Sara Wood sat on he sofa, smiling. 'So, he isn't like the rest of them,' she said to herself. 'And he blushed! I hope he loves me as much as I love him!'

In Sara Wood's world people either used you or killed you. But what about love? While Sara Wood knew what it felt like to be used, she was pretty certain she had no idea what love was supposed to feel like, because she was certain that in her entire life not one soul had ever loved her. And she had never loved anyone.

But something deep in her belly was connecting to a primal scream that crawled through her being now, seeking connection, desiring release. Sara Wood knew this was what love was supposed to feel like. When she saw him, that's all she felt, and it felt good because that feeling didn't want to hide in the shadows.

She got up from the sofa after Ed walked into the bathroom and closed the door. She heard the water turn on and walked around the apartment, curious what he was like. She walked into his bedroom, around the bed, looked out the window. As she turned to go back to the living room she saw some magazines under the bed, and bent down to look at them. She couldn't read the words on the covers, but there were women on them, women with very few clothes on. She picked one up and opened it up; there were men sticking their things into women, women sucking on men's things, women sucking on women -- which she thought looked really funny, and laughed at -- and all of the women were wearing weird stuff. She had never seen anything like what these women had on; not anywhere, anytime. She picked up another magazine, and another, and they were all filled with pictures like the first one, and all the women were dressed up in these silly looking costumes.

Ed McCarley finished drying himself off and cursed when he realized he'd left his change of clothes in his bedroom. He wrapped the towel around his waist, prepared to dash across the hall into his bedroom. This he adroitly did, only to screech to a halt as he saw Sara Wood sitting on his bed giggling at pictures in his stash of magazines. Like a deer caught in headlights, Ed McCarley froze.

But Ed McCarley had failed to appreciate the innocence harbored within this girl; she turned another page, completely focused on the new images, giving an appreciative ooh here and a stifled giggle there. At some point she became aware of Ed McCarley; she turned around to him and said, "Look at this!"

Ed McCarley, so rarely at a loss for words, was now speechless. He shook his head to clear his mind after a few more moments in the headlights, and as nonchalantly as he possibly could, asked Sara Wood if he could have some privacy while he got dressed. She grabbed a handful of the magazines and headed out of the room with them toward the sofa with the look of happily sated curiosity on her face! 'Oh, brother,' McCarley said to himself, closing the bedroom door behind her and wiping the band of sweat that had suddenly erupted on his forehead.

Soon they were headed back down the steps and out into the parking lot. He went up to a car covered with a heavy tan cloth and pulled the fabric away from the vehicle, revealing a tangerine colored Triumph TR6 convertible; Sara Wood squealed and clapped her hands as she looked at the car.

"C'mon, help me put the top down," McCarley said, pointing to hooks and levers, giving her directions. They folded the top down, and he pulled a vinyl-canvas cover out of the space behind the seats and snapped it into place. He opened her door and showed her how to put on the rather complicated manual seatbelt, and shut the door behind her.

"Oh, this is so cool," she said, happily drumming the dashboard in front of her. McCarley turned the ignition and the Weber carburetors feeding the little six cylinder engine kicked the beast awake. He studied the gauges while the engine warmed, doing his best to ignore her thighs all the while.

"Nothin' like an old British roadster," McCarley said as the car sputtered and burbled to life. "So," he added, "you want dinner and a movie, or dinner and shopping at the mall?"

Sara Wood's eyes went round as saucers. "The mall?" she exclaimed. "Could we...I've never bought stuff at the mall before." When McCarley simply said, "Answers that question!" she just squealed again, and bounced up and down in her seat.

Ed McCarley backed the little roadster up and pulled out onto the street, heading toward a gathering of restaurants clustered around the mall nearest to his apartment. "Whatcha feel like eating?" he asked. He looked across at Sara Wood, her long hair dancing in the slipstream, whipping around in her face as she laughed at the experience of bouncing down an urban street in a roadster.

"I don't know. Can you pick something out?"

They had dinner at a local steakhouse. He delighted in watching her fiddle with a 'bloomin' onion,' and he ordered her -- again at her request -- a filet mignon, fully dressed baked potato, and a heaping bowl of creamed spinach. She wolfed the food down and McCarley was certain he could see a little color return to her cheeks. After they finished he told her they would get dessert at the mall, and she again clapped her hands and bounced in her seat.

He took her to The Gap, and she picked out some -- to Ed McCarley -- wild low-cut jeans and some equally "interesting" shirts to go with them. He also got her some khaki shorts and a white cotton polo shirt. They went to one of the athletic shoe stores, and she picked out some tennis shoes and some hot pink Converse All Stars, which she found especially "cool" and asked to wear from the store. They made their way down to the food court, where she ordered some pineapple sherbet in a small sugar cone, and Ed ordered the same thing. They gathered her packages from the counter and went to sit by a fountain under a huge skylight in the center of the food court.

Ed McCarley watched Sara Wood lick the soft sherbet in the cone, watched as her small clean tongue licked at it white cream, and he saw his penis under her tongue in a flash that was as suddenly, and disturbingly gone. He shook his head and bit through his cone, yet in his mind's eye he was licking a chaste vagina. Again, he shook the vision from his mind. He looked at her and he saw abuse and neglect and a society that turned it's back on people like Sara Wood, and all too often took a perverse pleasure in the pain and suffering caused.

He struggled to reconcile the two visions of her...

He saw the Sunday school hypocrites in his mind one moment, the one's that complain about the tax burdens of helping the poor -- as they dive past starving families on their way to a Sunday buffet at the country club. The he saw her in that alley.

And after twenty years on the force, he had seen it all a hundred times before. The incremental murders that suburban johns inflict on downtown runaways, and just then he realized he had seen them over so many years he too had grown numb.

He thought of fucking Sara Wood and it made him feel sick to his stomach; not that she was ugly or a turn-off, far from it. He looked at her open, guileless -- and very cute face -- then the thought of being the next cock in a long line of nameless cocks to be shoved down this poor unwitting girls throat left him dry inside.

If ever their was a victim of society's hypocrisy and overt neglect, Ed McCarley told himself, here she is, sitting right next to me.

Sitting here in this mall, here sat one Sara Wood, poster child of the new American dream.

"Can we go look at more stuff," she asked. The childlike aspect of her voice was in full bloom now, as if the prospect of having something to call her very own could erase the facts of the last twenty years of her life -- hit the rewind button, and start recording all over again -- and let her start her life all over again.

Given the morality-free void that she had obviously grown up in, perhaps it was remarkable she had the capacity to feel good about herself on any level, or anyone. But, more to the point, she now had a huge grin on her face, and she was happy in a way very much like his own children once had been. Her's was an innocent happiness, a 'for the first time in my life I'm happy' expression of wonder.

They took off and walked down a wing of the mall they hadn't seen yet, and she saw things she had never heard of -- it was an infinitely bewildering progression of 'stuff' that most kids in this mall took for granted.

And she didn't know how to ask for things, she had no experience with asking anyone for anything. She'd never had anyone in her life to give her anything; she had never been spoiled by a doting father or a caring mother.

He saw that it wasn't just that things were out of reach; no, it was that there had never been anyone there to teach her how to reach.

She saw shiny iPods and had no idea what they were; the purpose of a laptop computer was a mystery to her. She saw posters of popular teen idols, and had no idea who they were, or why they were on a poster. The corridors of wealth were a mystery to her, simply beyond comprehension.

But as they walked along they came to a store that had mannequins in the windows dressed like the women in the magazines she had seen at his home. She stopped and looked at them; Ed McCarley looked embarrassed as he stopped beside her, noticed the locus of her attention. She ran inside, he looked up and groaned.

She ran up to a figure that was outfitted all in white, kind of like what McCarley thought might be Hugh Hefner's idea of a bridal lingerie-slut outfit. "Can I get it?!" she exclaimed. A salesgirl came over and looked at Sara Wood, then at Ed McCarley -- and she gave him a knowing smirk. Ed nodded at the salesgirl, sent Sara Wood off to be measured. She looked at another outfit that was very pale lavender and said, "Oooh, ain't this pretty!?" Ed again nodded to the salesgirl, who solicitously added, "Would you like to see some shoes, Miss?" When Ed McCarley walked out of the trashy lingerie store she was outfitted with the whole regalia; garters, stockings, pumps, bras, panties, 'you name it,' Ed thought, 'I bought it.' He shouldered the load and carried her loot to the car. They made their way to the Triumph and stashed her clothes in the trunk, and headed back to Ed's apartment as the sun set.

He carried her packages up the stairs, into his apartment. He paused, thinking about what had been bothering him all evening long, and made a decision. He took her packages into his kid's room and put them on the top bunk, then went back out to Sara, who was standing in the doorway. "Do you live somewhere I can take you?" he asked.

She shrugged her shoulders, looked uneasy.

"Listen, Sara," Ed McCarley said, looking her in the eye. "If it's none of my business just say so, or if you feel I should just shut-up, just -- tell me, Okay? My kid's only come here for Christmas and Easter; their room is empty the rest of the time. If you want to live here, with me -- in their room -- for awhile, until you can figure out what you want to do, well, it's yours if you want it. You won't have to worry about eating, or getting new clothes, or having a place to sleep. Okay? I just have a couple of rules."

Sara Wood was looking at the floor, because she didn't have the words for what was streaming through her mind.

"No drugs, no booze, no friends hanging out in here when I'm not around. Clear? You keep yourself clean, and your room picked up, and I'm going to figure out how to get you into school..."

Ed McCarley was cut off when Sara Wood ran into his arms at full speed, he put his arms around her as she started trembling, then crying. He kept his arms around are and stroked her hair, saying little things like 'shhh, it's going to be all right' and 'it's okay baby, it's okay.' He held her until she was spent, until he could feel her relaxing in his arms. She looked up at him, he looked down into her very tear-streaked face and kissed her on her forehead. "It's okay baby, you're home now," he whispered. "You don't ever have to worry about falling down again, because I'm gonna be here to catch you." He held her face in his hands and wiped away her tears with his thumbs.

"Can I ask you something?" she said.

"Yeah, sure."

"What's your name?"

A blank look came over Ed McCarley's face as he thought back to that day. 'I gave her my card -- oh, God, of course, she can't read...' He shook his head and laughed. "Yeah, darlin', I guess you should know my name. Ed, call me Eddie, okay?"

"Okay, Eddie."

"Now, let's get those teeth brushed, and get you off to bed."

After he had her tucked into the bottom bunk in his kids' room, he flipped out the light and closed the door. He went into the living room with a rum and coke, and sat down with his feet up on the coffee table. He reviewed the decisions he had made in his mind, which was a problem, because he had made the big one with his heart. He thought about Sunday School hypocrites; he thought about Sara Wood lying curled up and unconscious in an alley with a beer soaked bloody cock in her mouth. He thought of the dividing line between right and wrong, the gray area -- the no man's land caught between absolutes of good and evil -- where his feelings for this girl lay.

He leaned forward and put his head into his hands and cried, and Officer Ed McCarley cried for a very, very long time.

She was a child...

No, she's not...she's a woman...

You're just taking advantage of her...

So, maybe she's taking advantage of me...

Then -- finally...

How will she grow past this if I treat her life a child. She needs to be treated like an adult...

He was lying in his bed a couple of hours later -- on his back, eyes wide shut. There was no way he was going to get to sleep, he thought, glad for the three day weekend ahead. He tossed, turned, struggled with his emotions, then...

Suddenly, quietly, the door to his room opened. He saw Sara Wood silhouetted in the doorway, her long straight hair falling over the t-shirt she had worn to bed. She walked in slowly, and sat on the bed, looking at Ed McCarley's face.

"Eddie?"

"Yes, Sara."

"I don't want to be your kid," she said, a tremor under her words. "Ya know what I mean, Eddie?" When he was silent for a moment, she went on. "I want to be in here with you, Eddie. You said you wanted to take care of me; well, I want to take care of you, too."

--

"Eddie, say something, please?"

He sat up in bed, pushed himself up on his arms and flinched as an old shoulder wound bit into the present, and he cried out.

"What is it, Eddie?" she said, plainly scared now at this unforeseen reaction.

"It's nothing. I got shot once, and some nights it hurts me."

"Can I see?" she asked. She slid forward on the bed until she was close to McCarley at the head of the bed. She reached out to touch his shoulder and he flinched, slid away from her.

"Please," she pleaded, "don't run away from me, Eddie." She reached out again, touched his shoulder. She rubbed her fingers on his skin, probing and stroking. "I'm not going to hurt you," she continued. "Promise, okay?"

Ed McCarley felt an electric tremor pass from her fingers to his skin as she touched him; he felt this tremor in his shoulder, and he felt it boiling up from his groin, into the small of his back, up his spine. He tried to look away, close his eyes, but he felt that the worst thing he could do right now, do to the very fragile world Sara Wood lived in, was reject her, hurt her again in some new, unexpected way. But he knew he had to control the situation -- all of his training commanded that he control the situation.

Sara Wood felt the fragility of her own sense of control, and his, too. Yet from the moment she ran her fingernails over Ed McCarley's shoulder, then across to the back of his neck, she knew she could control the music of his heart.

"Turn over, Eddie, turn over and lay on your stomach for me." Ed McCarley slipped back down into his bed, turned over onto his stomach.

'A good, safe position,' he thought.

She continued to scratch his shoulder lightly, running her fingernails in little circles, moving over his neck at first, running her fingers through his hair, scratching and rubbing his head gently. He felt her moving, felt her move to sit on him, sit on the backs of his thighs. He felt her pubic hair on his skin just then, felt her warmth spread on his skin. He felt her lean forward, put her hands on his back between his shoulder blades, begin to rub his back with the open palms of her hands. She put strength into her movements, rubbing from the middle of his back with both hands, moving up to his neck and out along his shoulders, and after a few minutes of this he let out a sigh from the deepest reaches of his soul. She retreated down the same slope with her fingernails, current flowing down his back as she moved, and he saw the feeling in his mind as a brook meandering through rich, sun-wrapped fields.

Sara Wood kept rubbing his back, his shoulders and neck, for what felt like hours. Every now and then Ed McCarley sighed "Oh, God, this is heaven," and "That feels great," until he once said, "Oh God, you feel so good." With that said, with that opening, Sara Wood leaned forward and slid her arms under Ed McCarley's arms and cradled his soul in hers, put the side of her head on his back, just below his head, and she nuzzled her face on his back. She then kissed his back, moving her tongue to his spine, ran her hands over his outstretched arms, tracing little eddies in the flow of her currents. She then sat up, slid down until she was sitting on the backs of his thighs again. She scratched his back as she slid, scratched where she had been sitting, scratched the warm-moist slick where her vagina had rubbed against his back. She lightly ran her fingernails over his buttocks, felt him tense in the ticklishness of her silvery motions, then she rubbed his butt coarsely, soothing the currents out and away into the charged atmosphere of her intentions.